New York (CNN Business) As the bitcoin craze took off in 2017, a Long Island iced tea company sent its share price spiking as much as 380% merely by announcing a "pivot" to blockchain technology. Long Island Iced Tea Corp. even changed its name to Long Blockchain Corp.At the time, the episode underscored the excessive hype around the crypto space. Now, regulators say the name change was at the heart of an illegal insider trading scheme. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged three people Friday with insider trading in advance of the announcement that sent Long Island Iced Tea Corp.'s stock price to the moon. Eric Watson, Long Island Iced Tea's leading shareholder, tipped off a friend and broker, Oliver Barret-Lindsay, about the coming name change by sharing a draft of the company's press release, according to a complaint filed by the SEC in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Source: CNN July 10, 2021 19:41 UTC